After sailing the domain name seas, Pirate Bay returns to Sweden

Infamous torrent-fueled site continues to face legal pressure at home.

After nearly two weeks of bouncing its domain name around the globe, The Pirate Bay has returned to its home port. The notorious BitTorrent site originally went from .se to .sx (Sint Maarten), but it didn't stop there—in recent days, it has shifted from .ac (Ascension Island) to .pe (Peru) to .gy (Guyana). Now, as of Thursday, it's back to the comforts of .se (Sweden). Neither The Pirate Bay blog nor its Twitter feed offered any explanation.

The move to .sx originally took place back in April 2013 when a Swedish prosecutor filed a motion to seize thepiratebay.se, piratebay.se, and thepiratebay.is. The registrar, the Internet Infrastructure Foundation, has said previously that it would only do so after being served by a Swedish court.

Further Reading

“Our actions would largely be determined by the contents of the order and the issuing party,” the agency wrote in June 2012. “Accordingly, we will assess the situation on a case-by-case basis if such an order is issued.”

The four primary defendants of The Pirate Bay criminal case in Sweden—Fredrik “tiamo” Neij, Peter “brokep” Sunde, Gottfrid “anakata” Svartholm Warg, and the site's original financial backer Carl Lundström—were found guilty of aiding copyright infringement in 2009. (The Swedes claim to no longer own the site.)

Since the conviction, a Swedish appellate court reduced sentences for everyone except Svartholm Warg to between four and 10 months each but increased their collective fine to 46 million Swedish kronor ($6.8 million). In February 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden declined to hear an appeal, and the European Court of Human Rights rejected the appeal of two other Pirate Bay defendants in a unanimous decision in March 2013, finding that their conviction did not violate their human rights.

Meanwhile, its servers have been shifted to a number of different domains. The current flurry of activity started when the Pirate Bay was kicked off of its Guyana (.gy) home on Wednesday—the GY registry told TorrentFreak that the torrent-filled site has violated its policies, but it declined to cite which one. However, TorrentFreak noted, “A brief inspection of the registry’s acceptable use policy reveals that linking to copyrighted material is sufficient to warrant a suspension.” It's not clear whether the group has decided it's now safe to return to its roots or whether Sweden is only a temporary harbor.

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

17 Reader Comments

Given that a DNS entry essentially maps a name to an address, and doesn't actually contain anything illegal, I find it disturbing that it's so easy to seize one. Cheers to the Internet Infrastructure Foundation for requiring a court order but it's unfortunate that such an order could be served.

Given that a DNS entry essentially maps a name to an address, and doesn't actually contain anything illegal, I find it disturbing that it's so easy to seize one. Cheers to the Internet Infrastructure Foundation for requiring a court order but it's unfortunate that such an order could be served.

Indeed, and the US claiming jurisdiction over any site using com, org and several others on the basis that the TLD server is in the US is kind of fucked up.

What I want to know is why they don't simply go back to using their .org domain? Despite the fact that all the pressure to suspend their domains is coming from the US, their US-controlled .org domain has never actually been suspended, and is still auto-forwarding to whatever their current domain of the day is. That's still the only one listed in Google.

For the life of me I don't understand why they don't just use the .org domain until it actually is suspended. Since ICE seems to have backed off suspending domains that merely link to copyright infringing content, it seems like there's less risk there than anywhere else.

Given that a DNS entry essentially maps a name to an address, and doesn't actually contain anything illegal, I find it disturbing that it's so easy to seize one. Cheers to the Internet Infrastructure Foundation for requiring a court order but it's unfortunate that such an order could be served.

Indeed, and the US claiming jurisdiction over any site using com, org and several others on the basis that the TLD server is in the US is kind of fucked up.

What I want to know is why they don't simply go back to using their .org domain? Despite the fact that all the pressure to suspend their domains is coming from the US, their US-controlled .org domain has never actually been suspended, and is still auto-forwarding to whatever their current domain of the day is. That's still the only one listed in Google.

For the life of me I don't understand why they don't just use the .org domain until it actually is suspended. Since ICE seems to have backed off suspending domains that merely link to copyright infringing content, it seems like there's less risk there than anywhere else.

Thepiratebay.org forwards to their current domain, never accessing ThePirateBay servers. There is a much higher legal barrier to seizing a domain that merely redirects. If they actually used the .ORG domain the US would have a much stronger case to seize it.

Since The Pirate Bay was last in a courtroom they have changed how they operate. They no longer host torrent links (replaced by Magnet) and no longer have a BitTorrent tracker. Both were cited in the 2009 case against them. They haven't found the legal loophole yet, but they're certainly more resilient.

Given that a DNS entry essentially maps a name to an address, and doesn't actually contain anything illegal, I find it disturbing that it's so easy to seize one. Cheers to the Internet Infrastructure Foundation for requiring a court order but it's unfortunate that such an order could be served.

Indeed, and the US claiming jurisdiction over any site using com, org and several others on the basis that the TLD server is in the US is kind of fucked up.

Who exactly do you feel should have jurisdiction over a domain name?

I mean that they claim that they can extradite someone for committing crimes on US soil on the basis that they had a com/org/net TLD.

As far as the the founders' claim that they no longer own it - that's what has me confused. When they got indicted and went on the run, the story was that TPB had been sold to a Swedish gaming company. Once I heard that, I was pretty well done with them, figuring some corporation would sell out the users in a heartbeat.

But, that doesn't seem to be the case - if it had been bought out by some corporation years back, they would have screwed it up or killed it by now.

As far as the the founders' claim that they no longer own it - that's what has me confused. When they got indicted and went on the run, the story was that TPB had been sold to a Swedish gaming company. Once I heard that, I was pretty well done with them, figuring some corporation would sell out the users in a heartbeat.

But, that doesn't seem to be the case - if it had been bought out by some corporation years back, they would have screwed it up or killed it by now.

The company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gaming_Factory_X) went bankrupt and was it was not a serious bid, they were only trying to boost their own company stock value.The Pirate Bay guys was interesting in a sale though.As said, they're not officially involved anymore, but I'm pretty sure they have a strong influence still.

As far as the the founders' claim that they no longer own it - that's what has me confused. When they got indicted and went on the run, the story was that TPB had been sold to a Swedish gaming company. Once I heard that, I was pretty well done with them, figuring some corporation would sell out the users in a heartbeat.

But, that doesn't seem to be the case - if it had been bought out by some corporation years back, they would have screwed it up or killed it by now.

The company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gaming_Factory_X) went bankrupt and was it was not a serious bid, they were only trying to boost their own company stock value.The Pirate Bay guys was interesting in a sale though.As said, they're not officially involved anymore, but I'm pretty sure they have a strong influence still.

It's officially owned by a shell corporation that is owned anonymously. Sure, legally it's owned by someone else, and maybe they have someone else doing the day to day administration but at least one of the TPB 3 probably still owns the site.